Trailer
Plot summary
Whalers chase down a pod of orcas along the Pacific Northwest coast and capture an adolescent male, who is taken from his family and sold to Northwest Adventure Park. Months later, Jesse, an orphan whose mother left him six years ago, runs with other street kids in Portland until police chase him and Perry into the park's observation area. Caught while painting graffiti by the water tank, he is placed with foster parents Glen and Annie Greenwood in Astoria and must clean and repaint the area to stay out of juvenile hall. The whale, Willy, settles when Jesse plays his harmonica, and trainer Rae and caretaker Randolph notice that the boy is the only person the animal answers to. Park owner Dial, who has yet to make money on Willy, sees the pair's talent.
Cast
- Isaiah Maloneas Vector
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Free Willy (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's huge success inspired a letter-writing campaign, “Free Keiko”, to get the orca released from the Reino Aventura amusement park in Mexico City. Warner Bros., grateful for the whale and moved by the fans, contributed to his rehabilitation, and he was flown to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in a UPS C-130 cargo plane.
- Filmmakers searched the U.S., Japan, France, Spain and Argentina for an orca to portray Willy before settling on Keiko, a twelve-year-old that had lived at the Reino Aventura amusement park in Mexico City since 1985. A wooden backdrop made the park's arena look like the Pacific Northwest.
- Keiko never managed to integrate with a pod of orcas and kept returning to humans for food and company; a study in Marine Mammal Science judged the project a failure. He died of pneumonia, worsened by a deformed fin, in a Norwegian bay on December 12, 2003.
SPOILER
Walt Conti, who supervised the orca effects, estimated that half of the shots of the orca used animatronic stand-ins, and that the real animal's smaller movements actually made the work harder. The most extensive use of CGI is the climax, where Willy jumps over Jesse and into the wild.- Keith Walker conceived the story in 1984 while working on The Goonies with Richard Donner. In the original script Jesse was a mute 10-year-old boy living with nuns; Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner, hired Corey Blechman to make it less sentimental and Jesse older and street-tough.
